To generate interest in your blog, what you is to maximize interactions with your readers through their comments. Most of your visitors will simply leave a message. You should read the comments and respond to any questions there in, or just join the conversation.

In addition, authors of other blogs can leave comments without even visiting the blog! These are called “pingbacks” or “trackbacks”, and they basically inform other bloggers whenever they cite an article from another site in their own articles. This means tht online conversations are painless among various site users and websites.

Managing Comments

Sometimes you will get weird comments and you may need to moderate and manage comments and deal with the annoying trend in “comment spam”, when unwanted comments are posted to your blog.

We’ve set the system on WildlifeDirect to hold in moderation any comment with more than 1 URL. These comments are highlighted in the dashboard and you can check them and delete the spam and approve any genuine

Trackbacks

TrackBack provides notification between websites: it is a method of person A saying to person B, “This is something you may be interested in.” To do that, person A sends a TrackBack ping to person B. A better explanation is this:

Person A writes something on their blog.

Person B wants to comment on Person A’s blog, but wants her own readers to see what she had to say, and be able to comment on her own blog

Person B posts on her own blog and sends a trackback to Person A’s blog

Person A’s blog receives the trackback, and displays it as a comment to the original post. This comment contains a link to Person B’s post Most trackbacks send to Person A only a small portion (called an “excerpt”) of what Person B had to say. This is meant to act as a “teaser”, letting Person A (and his readers) see some of what Person B had to say, and encouraging them all to click over to Person B’s site to read the rest (and possibly comment).

Person B’s trackback to Person A’s blog gets posted along with all the comments.

Pingbacks 

These are similar to trackbacks but do not contain any content. The best way to think about pingbacks is as remote comments: A Pingback is another type of Linkback, or methods for Web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking to, or referring to their articles. Wordpress have automatic ones so that all the links included in a blog post can be pinged when it is published to related links . You can learn more about trackbacks and pingbacks here

If you are like me, you were given a password but your brain can’t fathom it and so you set your computer to remember it. Easy right. Dangerous I promise.  You have to change it to something you’ll always remember. I’ll tell you why.

Many of us stick with the random password we’re given when we start a new blog and since it’s an impossible string of numbers and letters, we choose the easy option and tell the computer to ‘remember me’. This can be fatal if you are traveling need to upload a post from an internet café or someone else’s computer which happens if there’s some breaking news you need to relay when you computer is back at the office. You don’t have to wait just because you don’t remember your password.

 This is important guys because it can be maddening to your readers when stand them up, you don’t show up, don’t post for a while. Don’t underestimate how annoyed and rebellious your readers will get if you change your posting frequency or abandon your blog for a few weeks. And for you it means starting from scratch and building up the readership all over again when you get back. Why bother when there’s an easy solution?  Just change your password to something you will always remember.

To change your password to something you will remember log in as normal, login as usual, go to Manage and Password options, type in your new password twice in the boxes and upload the changes. Hey Presto it’s done! Now you will have no problem posting from anywhere.

For those with a wildlifedirect.org blog, if you can’t remember your wildlifedirect password and can’t login – just email us on partnerships@wildlifedirect.org and we will immediately change your password for you from our end.

Comments are a critical means of having that important conversation with your visitors. You need to mange the comments in your blog to avoid receiving spam or hate mail.

Bloggers have several options for setting the way comments are to be handled and whether they should be moderated or not (that means whether they should be approved by the blog owner or not).

At WildlifeDirect we set all blogs not to be moderated unless a commentator attempts to leave 2 or more links. This is just one mechanism to prevent spam (we also have other tools). However, you might still have a valid commentator trying to leave more than 2 links because they have some important contribution to a conversation.

You need to monitor these comments which will not appear on the blog, but can be viewed and approved in the back end.

To do this simply log in and look at the right hand side of the dashboard. It will give you information on latest comments. Look at whether there are any comments in moderation. If there are comments in moderation, go to Comments and click on Awaiting moderation. This will allow you to approve, or delete any comment. It’s a good practice to clear your comments in moderation every week or so.

If you are getting comments that are disturbing, hate mail or that kind of thing, or just plain rubbish, you can turn on the moderation by going to Options, and then click on Discussion – here you can change various settings

To make it easy for you to track what’s happening I recommend you try the following settings which will minimize your need to actively manage or moderate

Usual settings for an article:
(These settings may be overridden for individual articles.)

• Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the article (slows down posting.)
• Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.)
• Allow people to post comments on the article

The right hand side bar of WildlifeDirect blogs is composed of Widgets.

We have already set one widget on all the blogs, the donations widget. You can change your sidebar and move, add or delete different items content (but please don’t delete the donations widget). I’ve adapted this information from Wordpress

First log in to word press using your username and password – http://gorilla.wildlifedirect.org/wp-login

Once you have logged in go to → Presentation  → Widgets

The Widgets SubPanel allows you to manage and configure widgets. Widget are drag-and-drop elements (if you like–gadgets or gizmos) that allow you to add various pieces of information to your theme’s sidebar content.

Widgets, for example, can be used to add Categories, Archives, Blogroll, Recent Posts, and Recent Comments to your sidebar.

You will see what widgets are available in the Available Widget box. Available Widgets This area displays one box for each of the widgets that has not been dragged to the Sidebar box above.

To drag a widget to the Sidebar, hover your mouse pointer over the widget, click and hold the mouse button (usually the left button), drag the widget to the Sidebar 1 box above, and release the mouse button.

Reverse the process to delete a widget from the Sidebar.

Archives - displays archive links for each month that has posts.

Title — description that appears over the list of archive links.

Show post counts — if checked, this box causes a count of the number of posts for each archive period.

Display as a drop down — if checked, this box causes the archives to be displayed in a drop-down box.

Calendar - displays a calendar of the current month. Dates appear links if there are posts for that day. •

Title — description that appears over the calendar

Categories - displays a list of post categories as links to those posts. •

Title — description that appears over the list of categories.

Show as dropdown — if checked, this box causes the categories to be displayed in a dropdown box. •

Show post counts — if checked, this box causes the count of the number of posts to display with each category. •

Show hierarchy — if checked, shows parent/child relationships in an indented manner.

Links - displays list of links (blogroll) separated by category. (Blogroll includes all your permanent links (eg. To your website or to other blogs you want to highlight. To decide on what goes into your blogroll enter this in the Blogroll menu bar which is on the main menu just before Presentation).

Recent Comments - displays a list of the blog’s most recent approved comments.

Title — description that appears over the list of recent comments.

Number of comments to show: (at most 15); enter the number of comments to be displayed.

Recent Posts - displays list of the blog’s most recent posts.

Title — description that appears over the list of recent posts.

Number of posts to show: (at most 15) — enter the number of posts to display.

RSS 1 - displays an RSS Feed. Using RSS Widgets lists several feeds to use with this widget.

Enter the RSS feed URL here — enter a complete feed URL, e.g. http://wordpress.org/development/feed/

Give the feed a title (optional) — enter a description that appears over the list of feed items

How many items would you like to display — enter the number of items from the feed you want displayed.

Search - displays a Search box to enter text to search your blog. A submit button is also provided. •

Tag Cloud - displays list of the blog’s tags is a tag cloud.

Title — description that appears over the tag cloud.

Text 1 - used to enter HTML, Javascript, or just plain text. Using Text Widgets details a number of possible uses for text widgets.

Title area — a description of the text widget

Text area — use this area to enter text, valid HTML, or even valid Javascript.

You can also insert a picture or logo here

Meta - displays links to meta functions such as Site Admin, Login/out, Entries RSS, Comments RSS, and WordPress.org.

Title — description that appears over the list of meta links. Pages –displays a link to each Page. (you currently have only one page)

Title — description that appears over the list of pages.

Sort by — select the order to sort the list of pages. Choose Page Title, Page Order, or Page ID from pulldown box (this was added at 2.2.1)

Exclude (Page IDs, separated by commas) — enter the Page ID(s) to exclude, separating each Page ID with a commaa (this was added at 2.2.1)

Save Changes Click this button to ensure that any changes you have made to your Widgets get saved. Once you click on the button, a confirmation text box will appear at the top of the page telling you that your Sidebar has been updated.

Sidebar Arrangement - Dragging and Dropping Widgets Widgets must first be dragged-and-dropped from the Available Widgets box to the Sidebar 1 box. To place a widget in the Sidebar 1 box, hover your mouse pointer over the desired widget, click and hold the mouse button (usually the left button), drag the widget into the Sidebar 1 box above, and release the mouse button.

To delete a widget from the Sidebar, drag-and-drop the widget from the Sidebar 1 box to the Available Widgets Box. The order, or arrangement, of the widgets can be changed by simply dragging-and-dropping the widget to where it should display.

You can move any widget to any position within the Sidebar box. The order of the widgets in the Sidebar box is the order those widgets will be displayed in the blog’s sidebar. Don’t forget to click the Save Changes button below the Available Widgets box to save changes you’ve made.

Click View site to quickly examine how it looks without having to log out. Configuring Widgets Once a widget is within the Sidebar box, that widget can be configured with more specific information.

If a widget can be configured, a configuration icon appears on the right side of each widget box (it looks like a little page inside the widget box). Clicking on the configuration icon causes the configuration window for that widget to open. Once the window is opened, make the changes appropriate for that widget, then click on the X at the top right of the window to close the configuration window.

Don’t forget to click the Save Changes button below the Available Widgets box to save changes you’ve made. Here’s a description of the various types of widget along with their configuration options:

Below the widget box are some additional options

Categories Widgets How many category widgets would you like?

[X] Use the pulldown box to determine the number of category widgets you want available in the Available Widgets box. Click on the Save button and that number of widgets will be made available for assignment. The minimum number of Category Widgets is 1 and a maximum of 9.

Text Widgets How many text widgets would you like?

[X] Use the pulldown box to determine the number of text widgets you want available in the Available Widgets box. Click on the Save button and that number of widgets will be made available for assignment. The minimum number of Text Widgets is 1 and a maximum of 9.

RSS Feed Widgets How many RSS widgets would you like?

[X] Use the pulldown box to determine the number of RSS widgets you want available in the Available Widgets box. Click on the Save button and that number of widgets will be made available for assignment. The minimum number of RSS Widgets is 1 and a maximum of 9.

By the end of this post you should know just how important linking is.

A link is a way that you can connect your blog to say ‘hey this is important and relevant’. It’s  a vote of confidence in that post. It’s one important way of creating a conversation. Links also influences the popularity of the blog you are linking to so you want to link in a way that drives links back to you. There are only 2 rules you ABSOLUTELY MUST follow.

1. Use links in every post (a few not hundreds!)

2. Make sure that links are truly relevant because Technorati tracks the number of links and the unique source of links to determine the breadth and readership of any author or site. Technorati monitors the ongoing conversation – who is linking to whom and which bloggers are commanding attention on various topics. You can monitor your ranking on Technorati very easily by just entering your blog URL in the search window.

You need to know about the difference between “inbound links” and “outbound links” Inbound links refer to hyperlinks from other sources citing your blog (these are valuable). Outbound links refer to hyperlinks from your blog to outside sources.

 A successful blog needs links from other quality sites, for several reasons. The first is to direct traffic: people will click from those sites to yours. The second is for better search engine ranking: when the search engines notice that other sites have linked to yours, that increases your site’s importance.

So do whatever you can to get links from other good blogs, particularly those on a related topic. It’s most valuable when you collect new links over weeks or even months. This steady flow of new links is not only easy for you to manage but the search engines will also see it as more natural. Excessive links can lead to penalties from the search engines (such as being de-listed) or can simply cause your blog to look like a flash in the pan that’s unworthy of long-term visibility.

If you want people to find your blog, you will need it to appear in search engines. For those with WildlifeDirect.org blogs ,search engine optimization (SEO) is handled by WildlifeDirect through Google.

A key to generating traffic is to have your site appear high up in search engine results for relevant searches. Ideally, this means appearing on the first page of search results, but showing up in the first three pages is pretty good. (Most searchers don’t venture past Page 3 of search results.)

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the art of getting your site noticed by search engines so it is listed more frequently and ranked higher in “organic” (unpaid) search results. When users search for “lions” for example, you want them to quickly find your site on the subject of lions conservation.

The most important part of SEO are keyword phrases. Choosing a keyword phrase for each page on your blog is an essential part of SEO. Before you start writing a blog entry, think about what you’re going to be writing about. Then think about what you would type into a search engine to find what you’ll be writing about. While you’re writing your blog entry, make sure to include the search phrase in your entry, several times at least. Use the same keyword phrase in the title of the page and at lease twice in the first paragraph.

Use these keywords in your title and enter them into the ‘tags’ section. Use keywords and phrases that refer to your post – they should be words or phrases that people may use to search for your blog entry.

I’ve just discovered this amazing bloggers hand book written by the reporters without borders on the Kabissa site.

Here are some funding opportunities and their application deadlines that I found on various websites

Open: Environment (international).
Applications for Conservation Trust grants from the National Geographic Society for conservation and research programs that promote the sustainable use and preservation of the earth’s biological, cultural, and historical resources. Grants of up to $20,000 each are available. Additional information is available on the organization’s Web site. Who may apply: individuals who have conducted prior research or conservation work related to the proposed program. Advanced degrees are not required. The society strongly encourages applicants to seek additional, concurrent sources of support.
Contact: NGS 1145 17th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036; (800) 647-5463 conservationtrust@ngs.org; http://www.nationalgeographic.com/research/grant/rg2.html

March 15: Environment (international).
Applications for the Research Fellowship Program, administered by the Wildlife Conservation Society, with support from the Conservation Leadership Programme. Fellowships of up to $25,000 each will support postgraduate or professional conservationists in conducting yearlong field-research projects that help protect threatened wildlife and habitats in Latin America, Africa, and most of Asia. Additional information is available on the organization’s Web site. Who may apply: professional conservationists or postgraduates who are pursuing an advanced degree. Native Americans and First Nation Peoples in Canada can apply to work on their native lands as long as their projects are relevant to conserving wildlife. Otherwise, grants will not support research in Australia, Europe, Japan, New Zealand, or North America. Organizations are not eligible to apply. Applications must be submitted online.
Contact: Kate Mastro, WCS 2300 Southern Boulevard, New York, N.Y. 10460; (718) 741-8197 fellowship@wcs.org; http://www.wcs.org/international/tcbp

September 15: Environment (international).
Applications for the Research Fellowship Program, administered by the Wildlife Conservation Society, with support from the Conservation Leadership Programme. Fellowships of up to $25,000 each will support postgraduate or professional conservationists in conducting yearlong field-research projects that help protect threatened wildlife and habitats in Latin America, Africa, and most of Asia. Additional information is available on the organization’s Web site. Who may apply: professional conservationists or postgraduates who are pursuing an advanced degree. Native Americans and First Nation Peoples in Canada can apply to work on their native lands as long as their projects are relevant to conserving wildlife. Otherwise, grants will not support research in Australia, Europe, Japan, New Zealand, or North America. Organizations are not eligible to apply. Applications must be submitted online.
Contact: Kate Mastro, WCS 2300 Southern Boulevard, New York, N.Y. 10460; (718) 741-8197 fellowship@wcs.org; http://www.wcs.org/international/tcbp

February 2: Film and media (international).
Nominations for the Harry Chapin Media Awards, sponsored by World Hunger Year and the Harry Chapin Foundation. The awards include cash prizes of up to $2,500 each to recognize print and electronic media coverage of hunger, poverty, and self-reliance issues. Awards will be made in six categories: books, newspapers, periodicals, photojournalism, radio, and television and film. Additional information is available on World Hunger Year’s Web site. Who may be nominated: individuals whose work appeared from January 1 to December 31, 2008. Television, film, and radio entries must have been broadcast. Unpublished manuscripts or photographs are not eligible. International entries must be submitted in English.
Contact: WHY 505 Eighth Avenue, Suite 2100, New York, N.Y. 10018; (212) 629-8850 media@worldhungeryear.org; http://www.worldhungeryear.org/media_center/hcma.asp

May 15: Grantsmanship (national).
Applications for training scholarships from the Foundation Center, supported by the Verizon Foundation. Scholarships will enable nonprofit organizations to take a Foundation Center seminar or course in proposal writing. Additional information is available on the center’s Web site. Who may apply: organizations classified as tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code with annual operating budgets under $1-million. Preference will be given to groups that are working in the areas of literacy and domestic violence.
Contact: JuWon Choi, Foundation Center 79 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10003; (212) 807-2413 jwc@foundationcenter.org; http://foundationcenter.org/getstarted/training/verizon

Bloggers are a weird community of people but the statistics show that we can’t ignore them. More than 15% of Americans are blogging or reading blogs, - in South Korea 40% of the population has a personal blog!

So, we have no choice to make a difference in wildlife conservation we have to blog. The more that I have gone into it, the more I realize that there are some unstated rules that govern blogging etiquette… here’s a few things you should be aware of or risk being an blog outcast

1. Get personal and bare it all Effective blogs require a certain amount of frankness. It’s exciting to hear and feel emotions, to hear strong opinions, and to hear a different perspective. But its boring when your opinion is middle of the fence, or when you talk in third person. Always be honest about who is writing – don’t mislead your readers, EVER.

2. Update regularly and frequently Your content will get stale unless you refresh the blog at least two to three times a week, if not more often. Tell your story in bits so that we are drawn in and forced to log in and read the next stage in some unfolding drama.

3. Interact with your community Find ways to encourage visitors to post comments and join the conversation. Thank your readers, listen to opinions and answer questions.

4. Don’t be offended by comments Sometimes comments can be a bit nasty – an inspired reaction is indeed a good indicator of how good your blog is. But hold back, don’t get offensive at any point just enjoy the conversation and wait for things to cool down. It always does….

You’ll find more interesting and useful tips on blogging etiquette here and here and here

If I told you that your blog is a personal diary then I lied. Your conservation blog is so much more than just a diary, it’s a conversation between you and your readers who you want to become supporters. They must not just read your posts, but to feel compelled to take action. It could be in the form of a comment on the post, which is nice, or preferably in the form of a whopping great donation. Yes! Always keep this goal in mind while you develop your conservation blog.

I’m no expert, but I hope that these tips below help everyone, from beginners to the experienced conservation bloggers, and especially the fatigued. Use these tips to get started - or re-started, to energize your blog posts and drive up traffic and donations. To see what I mean in full colour go to one of my all time favourite blogs which is written by an American retired conservationists, Chris Wemmer who describes his personal adventures in the American wilderness in Camera trap codger
HEADLINE MAGIC

Did you know that 8 out of 10 people read the headline, but only 2 out of 10 go further and read the actual blog post?

To get the reader beyond your title you first need a magnetic headline

“Your headline is the first, and perhaps only, impression you make on a prospective reader. Without a headline or post title that turns a browser into a reader, the rest of your words may as well not even exist.

But a headline can do more than simply grab attention. A great headline can also communicate a full message to its intended audience, and it absolutely must lure the reader into your body text.

At its essence, a compelling headline must promise some kind of benefit or reward for the reader, in trade for the valuable time it takes to read more.”

by Brian Clark

To hook the reader on your title use key words and phrases that get normal people, not just conservationists and donors excited like “Five reasons why gorillas wont survive”, or “Confessions of a poacher”, “secrets of our wild dogs”, “Why I hate scorpions”, “Encounter with a lion” and of course your typical campaign titles eg. “One thousand dollars will save a rhino”Grab attention with an interesting headline - check out Right name for a Spitter)

Raise alarm responsibly! - check Distubing news from Lodja

And above all, be honest - read Safe haven for congo’s orphaned chimps

Are you hooked yet? To read more about headlines go here